


The Fateful Dawns After Sleep

by Jateshi



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24522844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jateshi/pseuds/Jateshi
Summary: Set during the current campaign of the Dawn Aegis FFXIV plot, Balmung server [NA].





	The Fateful Dawns After Sleep

Half a bell after waking Lucien had finished his first mug of tea for the sun, habit twisting the tea cup until he felt the single crack along the rim under his finger, the dip and bare fracture along its edge nothing he had been able to repair. The tea had been a … slow thing to figure out but deep into the Dowager’s plague he had started to subconsciously time the tea drinking until he working out, to the bell, what the hells the cup did.

He twisted it in his fingers, after the tea had been drunk, and started at the gilded line at the lip and the single crack.

It’d kept him together, when the strain would have resulted in him being benched further or longer, and kept his head… as well pieced as he might’ve wanted. He could look back and spot the bells and suns where he had been willing to murder, easily, without any moderation or control; he could look back at the specific times he had almost killed and the fact that he had almost no regrets even now for it.

He should have, he knew.

He refilled the teapot with the herb mixture that he provided for himself, when he was never intended to share his tea - the crushed herbs were intended for settling the constant nausea that Eorzean living gave him, Lucien pouring the kettle over the herbs and then placing the lid on so that he could let it steep. He had just shy of two bells before the next cup, the Pureblood giving himself an overlap of about ten ticks of the bell to make sure that - whenever possible - he was not without the soothing clear head that it imparted without making him sick.

An artifact of any kind that didn’t make him sick? And that he couldn’t break at all? The teacup was worth its weight in orichalcum several times over, and the Pureblood knew it.

Something felt like it clicked then and he looked around his office, frowning as there was no window streaming in sunlight, no ivory veined with gold…

…should there have been?

Pale eyes closed as he set the tea cup down, hands splayed across the desk as he hunched, towering over the wood and parchment, the tomes and scrolls. He could not afford to be confused - not the span of even the quarter of a bell that previous episodes had left him dazed for. He had to be aware, he had to be on point for every bell he was awake because they could not be wasted. He was not yet willing to try and argue to sleep less - that was a battle that he’d lose with Lukel, let alone trying to make it to Enambris. and if he tried it with either of them they might renegotiate for more sleep and then he’d have less time for everything.

What ‘everything’ was, though, was smaller than it’d been before. He wasn’t sure how he felt of that yet - there was an almost deep-clawed fear that his people were not going to be safe enough a-field, even if he did trust Ibakha and Tyr. It felt like an old fear - that there would be someone like him there, close enough to dagger-strike and then their fragile work would be undone- but there was nothing to spark that other than fears, worries, all of them unfounded and uncontrolled, rocking in his head when he closed his eyes.

Even calm didn’t stop fear he’d come to realize in the past few weeks. He could be calm - terrified but calm, and standing on the thread of control at the edge of the abyss and knowing that he was having to keep himself from any steps by sheer will. He knew what happened when he took the imposed self-control off his actions and it was hard to claw back 'Luke’ from it - harder to stop that bleed from widening as he leaned into the brutal efficiency that was the only way he could safely act, to hold everything together.

Everyone else needed time - to get through their dreams, the same finger-like crawl down his spine as he refilled his tea cup and started to sip. They needed time to accept the choices they’d made, the sacrifices they’d made in order to stand a chance against the Dowager, and he would be damned if he did not do everything he could to buy them that time to collect themselves. Lukel’s pause, and his help, it was enough to claw back the rest of the bells.

Caelric, Enambris, Sain, Lukel, Isuke and Gideon, Neheon- there was nothing he could do for them, other than just be there. And how many others were there, who were already making difficult decisions that he couldn’t even help…?

His eyes cracked open as he looked down at the steady stack of tomes, scrolls, and his own piles of notes; when Enambris had pulled out more stacks of tomes from wherever she’d been hiding them, he’d begun the process he’d started moons ago of pulling a pile of the tomes up to read. Somewhere in them would be answers - and if he had a task, he could keep himself off the edge and stepped back into self control.

Lukel wanted him to stop holding himself back but - he closed his eyes again. If he didn’t have the rigid schedules or training and paperwork - the paperwork he still had, yes, but less now as he was able to prepare to turn more of it over to Ibakha’s division - to keep himself occupied, he was shifting the bells he spent at the starforge and he’d take the recording Enad had left him and try again. And then he’d spend more time digging through the tomes for every scrap he could find…

But it cut, that he didn’t know what else he could do. He’d have accepted Their Gift if he hadn’t seen the fear that still tore at faces and minds - it had hurt to tell Them that he could never fight at Their side again, because the safety and well-being of everyone else was more than what a single person could ever hope to do. And unlike the rest, he knew he was turning down another thing he wanted - Their knowledge, again.

His breath sharpened. 

It wasn’t worth it, not when he needed everyone to be as operational as possible. No fears. No worries. No doubts. Whoever took the Gift needed to be trusted. He’d never get that, never would have it he reminded himself as he reached for the tea again, turning the cup to feel that crack at the lip before he bent his head over his desk again, the long braid of hair falling down his back with some of it spilling onto the desk. 

He was worried. Every time he took a moment to think, he was worried because he knew, to the depths of his blood and the dredges of his soul, that they were missing too much. The list of what he knew they needed was longer than his forearm and no matter what he did - send observation equipment to the places he worried over, poured moons into tomes and scrolls - it wasn’t enough. 

More tea.

Maybe he’d find how often he’d need to drink his tea so that the worry was less, as well.


End file.
